"Sophistical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reproached with being the first to sell knowledge for money, for they not only demanded pay from those who came to hear their lectures, but they undertook, for a certain sum, to give young men a complete sophistical education. Pupils flocked to them in crowds, and they acquired such riches as neither art nor science had ever before earned among the Greeks. If we consider their doctrines philosophically, they amounted to a denial or renunciation of all true science. They were able to ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Still the history is alive. "I do not compose," Diderot said in the dedication. "I am no author; I read or I converse; I ask questions and I give answers." The writer throws himself into the historic situation with the vivid freshness of a contemporary, and if the criticism is sophistical, at least the picture is admirably dramatic. Seneca's position as the minister of Nero seemed exactly one of those cases which always excited Diderot's deepest interest—a case, we mean, in which the general rules of morality condemn, but common ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... sounds late and elaborate but still it follows easily if the dialectic of Gotama is applied uncompromisingly not only to our mental processes but to the external world. Yet even in India the result was felt to be fantastic and sophistical and it is not surprising if after the lapse of a few generations a new system of idealism became fashionable which, although none too intelligible, was abstruse rather ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... advertisements of lost children, I always add mentally to the description, "was last seen in company with a Boys' Dog." Nor is his influence wholly confined to small boys. I have seen him waiting patiently for larger boys on the way to school, and by artful and sophistical practices inducing them to play truant. I have seen him lying at the school-house door, with the intention of enticing the children on their way home to distant and remote localities. He has led many an unsuspecting boy to the wharves and quays by assuming ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... and reliable are these straightforward statements of those American historians of the times, and the verdict of even a Boston jury, than the sophistical, elaborate, and reiterated efforts of Mr. Bancroft, in the 43rd and 44th chapters of his History, to implicate the soldiers as the provoking and guilty causes of the collision, and impugning the integrity of the counsel ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... influence over him the more I should lose. So you see it would not be natural for me to advise him to take a step which would ultimately prove very detrimental to my interests. If you can prove that my reasons are either trifling or sophistical, speak openly: I will tell M. Dandolo that my mind has changed; Madame Tripolo will become his wife when we return to Venice. But let me warn you that thorough conviction ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to demonstrate, by the force of example and contrast, the sophistical absurdity of absolute theories, that, however naturally and harmoniously their parts may be made to correspond in thesis and system as a whole, according to which the same consequences, upon a given principle, should inevitably flow from certain causes, yet that, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Roman histories—to Livy and Caesar especially; to Niebuhr, Mommsen, Arnold, and Liddell. See also Durny, Hist. des Romains; Michelet, Hist. de Rom. Napoleon's History of Caesar should be read, admirable in style, and interesting in matter, although a sophistical defense ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... of the sophistical puzzles noticed by Aldrich, but he is not happy in his attempt at a solution. He proposes to remove the difficulty by demonstrating that in a certain given time, Achilles would overtake the tortoise; as if any one had ever doubted that. The very problem proposed, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 42, Saturday, August 17, 1850 • Various
... we undertook to prove; and this is called the Fallacy of Confusion. Under this head, indeed, of Fallacies of Confusion, might strictly be brought almost any fallacy, though falling also under some other head: for, some of the links in an argument, especially if sophistical, are sure to be suppressed; and, it being left doubtful which is the proposition to be supplied, we can seldom tell with certainty under which class the fallacy absolutely comes. It is, however, convenient to reserve the name Fallacy of Confusion for cases where Confusion ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... the like conditions of life for their fellowmen elsewhere) that the citizens of such a commonwealth can without shame entertain or put in evidence a spirit of patriotic solidarity; and it is only by specious and sophistical appeal to the national honour—a conceit surviving out of the dynastic past—that the populace of such a commonwealth can be stirred to anything beyond a defense of their own proper liberties or the ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... fundamental dogmas of the Christian tradition. In order to conceal the procedure as far as possible, some of them are now contending brazenly that Christ never taught the doctrine of eternal punishment, and are deluding their uncultivated congregations with sophistical manipulations of ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... sir, conceive you to be of that sophistical, captious spirit, or of that uncandid dulness, as to require, for every general observation or sentiment, an explicit detail of the correctives and exceptions which reason will presume to be included in ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in these free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored—contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between right and wrong: vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a policy of 'don't care' on a question about which ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... hesitate to "ease" a prophecy until it fitted, if the credit of the shrine of his favourite saints could be increased by such a procedure. There is no impeachment of his honour in the supposition. The logic of the matter is quite simple, if somewhat sophistical. The holiness of the church of the martyrs guarantees the reality of the appearance of the Archangel Gabriel there; and what the archangel says must be true. Therefore, if anything seem to be wrong, that must be the mistake of the transmitter; and, in justice to the archangel, it ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... enumerate the infim species under each of the two main heads. We shall presently imitate this procedure for reasons of expediency. For the whole phraseology of the subject is derived from Aristotle's treatise on Sophistical Refutations, and we must either keep to his method or break away from tradition altogether. Sufficient confusion has already arisen from retaining Aristotle's language ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... replied Mistress Nutter; "and proceeds to use all those sophistical arguments, which we have so often heard, to pervert her mind, and overthrow her principles. But Alizon is proof against them all. Religion and virtue support her, and make her more than a match for her opponent. Equally vain are the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the "practical reformer" so that anybody can recognize him: "This revolt against ideas is carried so far that able men have come seriously to look upon progress as a matter for the manipulation of wire-pullers, something to be 'jobbed' in committee by sophistical notions or other clever trickery." Lincoln Steffens calls these people "our damned rascals." Mr. Hobson continues, "The attraction of some obvious gain, the suppression of some scandalous abuse of monopolist power by a private company, some needed enlargement of existing Municipal or State ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... First, on the part of those very propositions which are the starting point of the reason: for the assertion "Good is not good" is contrary to the assertion "Good is good" (Peri Herm. ii). Secondly, on the part of the process of reasoning; forasmuch as a sophistical syllogism is contrary to a dialectic or demonstrative syllogism. Wherefore it is clear that a false reason can corrupt the habit of a true opinion or even of science. Hence the Philosopher, as stated above, says ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... recognize this truth to its full extent when they have completely freed themselves from all religious and scientific superstitions and from all the consequent misrepresentations and sophistical distortions by which its recognition has been ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy
... attorney-general and commander of his Legion of Honour; who, for a bribe of fifty thousand livres—obtained for him, after he had been defeated in every other court, a judgment in his favour, in the tribunal of cassation, under the sophistical conclusion that all emigrants, being, according to law, considered as politically dead, a will in the name of any one of them was merely a pious fraud to preserve the property ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... reverence for him is still visible, and he takes every opportunity of contrasting his gigantic grandeur with the petty refinements of Euripides. With infinite cleverness and inexhaustible flow of wit, he has exposed the sophistical subtilty, the rhetorical and philosophical pretensions, the immoral and seductive effeminacy, and the excitations to undisguised sensuality of Euripides. As, however, modern critics have generally looked upon Aristophanes as no better than a writer of extravagant and libellous farces, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Anglo-Saxon race did not almost universally denounce this hideous custom, I would bring Sextus Empiricus to show that the first laws ever enacted were to prevent men from devouring each other; and even this may be declared, by our sophistical emancipationists, to be one of the first violations of natural right. If the right of cannibalism is claimed, then will nature assert its wrong, and vindicate civilization. But if cannibalism is rejected ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... its means, too, he can invent an imaginary antagonist, and convert him when he chooses by some absurdly sophistical argument. ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... stock, I know all the sophistical arguments, and they are many, for capitalizing earning capacity. It is a very attractive and interesting argument, and in some instances it is legitimately used. But there is a line you cross, above which you ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... uphold them." The objection to explaining captious by simply fallacious, is that the word means this by inference or consequence, rather than primarily. Because one who is eager to controvert, i.e. who is captious, generally, but not always, acts for a sophistical purpose and means to deceive. Cicero, I believe, uses fallax and captiosus as distinct, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... pattern of Stareleigh could be found now, but we could name recent performances in which incidents such as, "Is your name Nathaniel Daniel or Daniel Nathaniel?" have been repeated. Neither has the blustering of Buzfuz or his sophistical plaintiveness wholly gone by. The "cloth" was represented by the powerful but revolting sketch of Stiggins, which, it is strange, was not resented by the Dissenters of the day, and also by a more worthy specimen ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... life in one long and never-ending lie; to have to praise with a blush the virtue that we flung behind us; to hear from the lips of others harsh words for our own action; to seek a little calm in sophistical systems, that the breath of a single good man scatters to the winds; to shut ourselves for ever out from the spring of true joys, the only joys that are virtuous, austere, sublime; and to give ourselves ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... oppositions of a heartless science. Secondly, we have seen this very question of the inhabitation of the planets and satellites rendered a topic of ridicule for Thomas Paine, and an inviting theme for raillery to others of sophistical spirit, by the way in which it has been foolishly mixed up with sacred or spiritual concerns. Surely, the object of God in the creation of our terrestrial race, or the benefits of the death of Jesus Christ, can have ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... The sophistical papists assert that a person is able by natural strength to love God long before grace has entered his heart, and to perform works of real merit. They believe they are able to fulfill the commandments of God. ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... whose impulses render her at moments more prudent than the Servite Fra-Paolo, the most terrible adviser that the Ten at Venice ever had; more deceitful than a king; more adroit than Louis XI; more profound than Machiavelli; as sophistical as Hobbes; as acute as Voltaire; as pliant as the fiancee of Mamolin; and distrustful of no one in the whole ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... said he, "and give me a little assistance. Your sophistical exposition of the words of our princess is entirely thrown away. She said to me, 'At eleven o'clock I will expect you and the Baron von Trenck in my room.' That is certainly explicit—as it appears to me, and needs no explanation. Lend me ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... of miracles is entitled to say that the intercalation of miracles in the world's history is also according to law,—parts, though minute parts, of a universal plan, and permitted for reasons worthy of the Creator. To both, or neither, is the same answer open. Your objection is, I think, a mere sophistical evasion of the difficulty. There is no difference whatever in the nature of the events, except that the variation from the 'established series of sequences' is infinitely greater in those portentous revolutions of the universe to which the geologist points your attention. The application ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... are the work of God, so valour is made by Him and placed in the heart of stout champions, and freedom therewithal to use it as they will, for good or evil."—Fstbrra Saga (1852), p. 12: one of the sophistical additions to the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Euthycles), are remarkable for thoroughness of argument and for the skill which is displayed in handling legal and political questions, though, like almost all Athenian forensic orations, they are sometimes sophistical in argument. ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... to dismiss thy innocent and unsuspicious prize, did not I know thee too obstinate and headstrong to listen to the voice of wisdom. Essay then thy base and low-minded temptations, thy corrupt and sophistical reasonings, to tarnish the unsullied purity of her mind, and it is well. If by such a wretch as thee she can be seduced from the obedience of virtue and the Gods, then let her fall. She were then a victim worthy of thee. But if thou essayest the means of tyranny and force, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... and tell you the very truth) my mind findeth not itself satisfied on this point. But ever methinketh that these things, with which you rather convince and conclude me than induce a credence and persuade me that every man is in prison already, are but sophistical fancies, and that except those that are commonly called prisoners, other men are not in any ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... of jokelets and beat them up small, In sophistical fudge, with no logic at all; Then pepper the mixture with snigger and jeer; Add insolent "sauce," and a soupcon of sneer; Shred stale sentiment fine, just as much as you want, And thicken with cynical clap-trap and cant, Plus oil—of that species which "smells of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... not be misled by his exclusive references to poesia, as closer observation shows that he means thereby the whole mental activity of the poet-scholars. This it is whose enemies he so vigorously combats—the frivolous ignoramuses who have no soul for anything but debauchery; the sophistical theologian to whom Helicon, the Castalian fountain, and the grove of Apollo were foolishness; the greedy lawyers, to whom poetry was a superfluity, since no money was to be made by it; finally the mendicant friars, described ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... adopted, had it not been for the extraordinary haste, which seemed to indicate that it was undesirable or impossible to wait until Livia should have given birth to her child, and which made it necessary to trouble the pontifical college for its somewhat sophistical consent. For all were accustomed to seeing the marriages of great personages made and unmade in this manner and on such bases. Why, then, were these nuptials so precipitately concluded, apparently with the consent of all concerned? Why did they all, Livia and Octavianus not less than ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... the Drapier's Letters are sophistical, his statements grossly exaggerated, and his advice sometimes shameless, as, for instance, in recommending what is now but too well known as 'boycotting.' The end, however, was gained, and the Dean was treated with the honours of a conqueror. On his return ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... a form which apparently might have struggled in Thermopylae. Next to him was the Austrian diplomatist, the Sosia of all cabinets, in whose gay address and rattling conversation you could hardly recognise the sophistical defender of unauthorised invasion, and the subtle inventor of Holy Alliances and Imperial Leagues. Then came the rich usurer from Frankfort or the prosperous merchant from Hamburgh, who, with his ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... atheists were burned, generous minds would use their best efforts to prove that men suspected of atheism had not denied God, because they would not have been understood had they attempted to say—"They have denied God perhaps, but that is no reason for killing them." Thence arose the sophistical apologies for certain doctrines, apologies made with a good intention, but which trouble the sincerity of history. These are the brands of servitude, which must disappear where liberty prevails. We are able now to call things by their proper names, for there exist no longer ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... I am wrong. Charlotte did not read Balzac till later, when George Henry Lewes told her to. But there were those twenty "clever, wicked, sophistical, and immoral French books" that she read in eighteen-forty. They may have ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... a feigned heaven and happiness, but charge God and the Lord Jesus as mere impostors, who, while they tell us that Christ was made of God to be sin for us, affirm that it was not so really, suggesting this sophistical reason, 'No wrong judgment comes from the Lord.' I say again, this wicked doctrine is the next way to turn the gospel in thy thoughts to no more than a cunningly-devised fable (2 Peter 1:16), and to make Jesus Christ, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
